We have a fedora server(Fedora release 17 (Beefy Miracle)) with a few aliases on the main NIC that don't get setup during boot. Here's my config:
# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-em1*
DEVICE="em1"
UUID="ab2ad60a-c916-45b5-81c5-d1534e0bc36a"
NM_CONTROLLED="yes"
BOOTPROTO="dhcp"
HWADDR="00:1C:C4:EC:43:4A"
ONBOOT="yes"
ISALIAS=yes
DEVICE=em1:0
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
IPADDR=192.168.255.3
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=192.168.255.0
BROADCAST=192.168.255.255
TYPE=Ethernet
ISALIAS=yes
DEVICE=em1:1
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
IPADDR=192.168.255.4
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=192.168.255.0
BROADCAST=192.168.255.255
TYPE=Ethernet
ISALIAS=yes
DEVICE=em1:2
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
IPADDR=192.168.255.5
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=192.168.255.0
BROADCAST=192.168.255.255
TYPE=Ethernet
ISALIAS=yes
DEVICE=em1:3
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
IPADDR=192.168.255.23
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=192.168.255.0
BROADCAST=192.168.255.255
TYPE=Ethernet
Hardlinks are setup according to documentation I was reading.
# ls -lah /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/
total 20K
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4.0K May 8 09:33 .
drwxr-xr-x. 4 root root 4.0K Nov 15 2012 ..
-rw-r--r--. 3 root root 156 Jan 16 00:40 ifcfg-em1:0
-rw-r--r--. 3 root root 156 Jan 16 00:41 ifcfg-em1:1
-rw-r--r--. 3 root root 156 Jan 16 00:41 ifcfg-em1:2
# ls -lah /etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default/
total 20K
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4.0K May 7 16:50 .
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4.0K Nov 15 2012 ..
-rw-r--r--. 3 root root 156 Jan 16 00:40 ifcfg-em1:0
-rw-r--r--. 3 root root 156 Jan 16 00:41 ifcfg-em1:1
-rw-r--r--. 3 root root 156 Jan 16 00:41 ifcfg-em1:2
The aliases work great when setup with the commands like this:
# ip addr add 192.168.255.3/24 brd + dev em1 label em1:0
However, they never come up on boot, or after the physical network connection is disconnected. All the docs I've read suggest this is the correct way to do this, but on every boot, we have to set it up manually.